Repointing modern brickwork in Crossways

One elevation needs it, not four. Plenty of houses in Crossways are only forty or fifty years old and already want pointing on one face, which surprises people. It is entirely normal.

The elevation that takes the driven rain is worn out while the sheltered walls are barely touched, and repointing the lot would be spending money on three walls that do not need it. We rake back to sound mortar on the face that needs it, to a depth of about twice the joint width, by hand, never with an angle grinder that would widen it permanently. The joints are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up, and struck to whatever the house already carries, which on this stock is nearly always bucket handle or weather struck rather than flush or recessed.

The gauge, which is the part that gets guessed. Sand and cement is not one mortar. A mix with lime in it as well as cement behaves quite differently from a cement only mix, and the proportions used in the fifties are not the ones used in the eighties. Matching the colour is the easy half. Matching the strength decides whether the repair lasts, because a joint stronger than the brick stops being the sacrificial part of the wall and pushes the wear into the brick faces instead. We match the gauge to what came out and write the proportions into the quote.

How a cavity wall fails, which is not how an old wall fails. On a solid wall the mortar washes out and the wall gets wet through. On a modern cavity skin the joint erodes back at the arris, a shallow ledge forms where water can stand instead of running off, and the frost lifts the surface off in flakes. The perpends, the vertical joints, go before the bed joints because they were filled last and often filled thin, and a fired brick that has stood in a wet joint for a winter loses its face rather than its edges. Left long enough, that spalling turns into penetrating damp on the inside of the wall. That is why a wall here can look sound from ten feet away and be open when you get up to it, and it is why the diagnosis has to be done at arm's length, not from the pavement.

Spalled brick faces. Where the face of a Crossways brick has already blown, we cut the brick out whole and turn it or replace it rather than filling the hollow with mortar. A mortar patch never matches and drops out within a few winters. Matching a facing brick from the seventies or eighties often means reclaimed stock, so we hold a sample against the wall and show you what we have found before anything is laid, judged on how it will look once it has a few years of weathering on it.

Garden walls, piers and copings. Estate plots in Crossways are divided by long low walls with piers at the drive, and those are the first mortar on a property to go. They stand in the open with weather on both sides, most were built without a damp proof course so they draw water up out of the ground, and once the coping loses its bedding and the units go loose the top of the wall fills with water and the frost opens it out. Repointing the coping and the top courses early is quick work. Left too long and the joints stop being the problem.

Movement joints and stacks. Long runs of modern Crossways brickwork carry vertical movement joints, filled with a compressible strip and sealed. Those are not mortar joints and must never be pointed solid, and plenty have been, which traps water behind the filling. A stack, where the house has one, takes weather on four sides with nothing warming it, so it wants repointing above the flashing and the flaunching renewed.

The older edges of Crossways. A small share of property around the edges predates all of this and is solid wall rather than cavity, with no gap behind the brick and nothing to stop water crossing it except thickness and evaporation. Those want a breathable NHL lime mortar and a hand raked joint, the same as any period wall of that age, and they are the exception here. We will tell you clearly which of the two you own, because the two want opposite things.

We never price by the square metre, because square metres say little until someone has looked hard at the joints. Getting to the wall. A detached house with an open frontage takes a straightforward scaffold. An end terrace whose gable sits over a shared rear path needs the scaffold agreed with the neighbours, and a bungalow can often be done from a tower. The scaffold is priced as its own line, as the work at height rules require.

What the joints are made of. Cement joints are hard, so raking them out is slow and done with care to keep the brick arrises intact. Soft lime joints in an older cottage come out faster, but by hand. Either way, how deep the joints go back and whether any faces have spalled set the hours.

The mix. A mortar harder than the brick is the classic mistake. On a soft pre war brick it holds water and the face blows off in a hard frost. Lime is right on most of the older walls in Crossways, and a matched sand and cement mix suits the modern ones.

The exposed side. Gable ends that face the prevailing weather often need more work than the sheltered sides, so each elevation is priced on its own.

Ask a rival firm to spell out the rake depth, hand or disc, the mix and how it was matched, and whether scaffold is included.

About one home in seven in Crossways predates 1919, about a third went up between 1945 and 1982, and more than a quarter after 1983. That matters because mortar practice changed a great deal across those decades.

Earlier post-war brickwork was commonly laid in a mix with lime in it as well as cement, which is more forgiving and fails gently. Later work moved towards harder cement only mixes, and harder again once masonry cement became normal. Put a nineteen eighties mortar into a nineteen fifties wall and the joint will outlive the brick, which sounds like a good thing and is not: the wall then wears out through the brick faces instead of through the joints, and brick faces cannot be renewed the way a joint can.

So on a village like this one the useful question is not what colour the mortar is. It is what the house was built in and what strength is going back. Find out roughly when your house went up, ask whoever is quoting to name the proportions, not just write sand and cement, and be careful of anyone who offers you lime pointing here on the grounds that it is better. It is better on a solid wall built to breathe. On a cavity skin in this exposure it is simply too weak, and it will be washing back out of the joints inside a few years. The mix is chosen for the wall in front of you, not for a principle.

Crossways is 21.8 miles from our base in Boscombe. We repoint in the village and in Woodsford, Warmwell and Moreton, out towards Dorchester and Wool, with Dorset Council as the local authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Crossways, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Your wall is priced in person by Thomas Hannen, the owner, after he has checked the joints himself. On Checkatrade, a verified customer rated the firm 10 out of 10. The site visit carries no charge, and neither does your itemised written quote.

Most repairs in Crossways need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.